Roger Ebert(4)

But in ROMA, he is even more direct, more stark: An expedition to inspect progress on the Rome subway system suddenly becomes transcendent when workmen break through to an underground crypt from pre-Christian times. The frescoes on the walls are so clear they might have been painted yesterday, until the air of the modern city touches them.

Rome, the eternal city, has historically been as carnal as it has been sacred. Fellini won’t settle for one or the other; he uses scenes of carnality to symbolize a blessed state, and vice versa. Nothing could be more eternal, more patient, and more resigned than Fellini’s use of a weary prostitute standing beside a highway outside Rome.

She is tall, huge-bosomed, garishly made up, and her feet are tired. She stands among the broken stones of the Roman Empire, expecting nothing, hoping for nothing.The prostitute, so often used as a symbol of fleeting moments and insubstantial experiences, becomes eternal; and the Church, always the symbol of the unchanging, the rock, becomes temporal.

In his most audacious sequence, Fellini gives us an “ecclesiastical fashion show,” with roller-skating priests, and nuns whose habits are made of blinking neon lights. What is unreal, and where is the real? Fellini doesn’t know, and he seems to believe that Rome has never known. Rome has simply endured, waiting in the hope of someday finding out.

Roger Ebert(fin)

“Fellini’s Roma” was attacked in some circles as an example of Fellini coasting on his genius. I find this point of view completely incomprehensible. Critics who would force Fellini back into traditional narrative films are missing the point; Fellini isn’t just giving us a lot of flashy scenes, he’s building a narrative that has a city for its protagonist instead of a single character.The only sly thing is that the city isn’t Rome, it’s Fellini, disguised in bricks, mortar, and ruins. Fellini, who cannot find his way between the flesh and the spirit, who cannot find the connection between his youth and his greatness, and whose gift is to make movies where everything is obvious and nothing is simple. That was the dilemma that the Fellini character faced in “8 1/2”, when he couldn’t make sense of his life, and it’s the dilemma we all face every day, isn’t it?

Avec Roma, Fellini donne sa vision, ou plus exactement sa représentation , de la ville de Rome, entremêlant principalement deux époques : celle où il est arrivé de sa province en 1939 et l’époque actuelle, celle du film, c'est-à-dire 1972.Il s’affranchit de toute ligne narrative pour former une série de tableaux, d’évocations, de variations. Roma est, avec Amarcord, le film de Fellini le plus spectaculaire et le plus inventif sur le plan des images, tous ses tableaux ont une force visuelle indéniable, aucun ne semble plus faible.

Par delà toute la richesse des thèmes évoqués, deux sentiments ressortent : une certaine nostalgie, Fellini idéalise, brode, édulcore ses souvenirs de l’époque de 1939, la Trattoria, le spectacle de music-hall, les bordels, tout évoque la vie, l’exubérance italienne (de façon symptomatique, Fellini met son propre personnage de 1939 en jeune homme tout de blanc vêtu et coiffé à la mode des années 70 : ce personnage, c’est non seulement le Fellini d’hier mais aussi le Fellini d’aujourd’hui).